CS92 Mass Media

UPDATE: Today we demonstrated our project to the class again for
the final time. We talked a little about our progress and the fact that
we still have issues to be resolved as far as exactly how some things will
get done as well as implementation and debugging work to be done. Our
projector wasn't particularly stable, but it was the first time we had put
together something which included intro screens and most of the major
parts of the program. It could load an analysis and movie, play through
in the appropriate ways, and people could create new markers and navigate
between markers for the first time. It crashed a lot when people used it,
but in general the response was good. Through watching people use it, we
picked up a couple of interface details which seemed to confuse people,
and Roger gave us some good comments at the end.

As of now, the network implementation is up in the air. We believe
loading from and saving to a server is technically possible, but it does
not seem to be a reasonable goal for Thursday. We talked to Roger about
it and he thought that the core program without the network capabilities
was solid and would certainly be good enough to turn in. He has advised
us to figure out what it would take to get the network stuff working, and
if we can't do it by Thursday, to describe in writing what it would take
so that if Darrell wants it to be implemented in the future, it would be
quickly apparent how much work would be involved. Our first reactions to
this proposition were very positive, and we tentatively plan on adhering
to it. So what remains is to get the 'core' program polished up and ready
for Thursday.

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4.26.00

UPDATE: The project proceeds apace. We will present a prototype
to the class tomorrow, and expect to
have the functionality of the playback mode in place by then- reading in a
data file and a movie, controlling the movie,
moving between the markers, displaying the marker information in both the
marker index and the display fields, and
generally having all the parts of the program talk to each other and play
well together.

After this, the features which remain to be implemented are primarily
the functions which are specific to the editing
mode- namely, getting the 'Mark' button to stop the movie and activate the
marker creation/editing fields and checkboxes,
getting the new marker information from the text fields and checkboxes,
saving it and updating everything accordingly,
and providing users the ability to cancel a marker during its creation and
change and delete existing markers. Aside from
editing functions, we need to decide if/how the presentation of the
example ('tutorial') analysis will differ from that of the
ads to be analyzed by the students, how Prof. West's analysis of the ad in
question will be presented to the student after
s/he finishes the analysis, and finally, how the students' analyses will
be saved and, once they're saved, accessed by
other students, Prof. West, and the larger community.

At some point in the near future, we also need to conduct a usability
study of some sort on a group of people similar to our target audience
and incorporate the feedback into our project.
This will most likely be done on friends of ours, some of whom are
Political Science concentrators. We plan on doing this
sometime this weekend or early next week.

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From
the initial meeting, we came up with several ideas for the project. As a starting
point, we could present the students with a straight frame-by-frame analysis
of a television campaign ad. However, we feel it is more important to allow
the students to interact with the project. One way we considered doing this
was via the apprenticeship model. This could involve the students going through
a step by step analysis where the program does all of the work and then proceeding
to more ads where gradually the students become more responsible for dissecting
the ads themselves. Other ideas for interaction include the use of polls, where
students could express their opinons and reactions to an ad, and then see how
other students felt/reacted. Our impression is that the most important issue
in the analysis of the television ads is not so much a cut and dry depiction
of how an ad is deconstructed. Rather, we feel that the students' reaction to
and critical interpretation of the ad is where the most valuable learning takes
place. Since there will be a large number of students taking part in the class,
we feel that the program may end up being a way for students to interact with
each other and see how differentindividuals react to different ads. If students
entered their demographics it might also be worthwhile to see how different
demographics reacted. Professor West also expressed some interest in some sort
of online quiz. Although this is feasible, our feeling is that it should involve
more than would be possible via a standard paper quiz in the classroom. Rather
than something to be graded on, perhaps this could become another avenue for
the students to see other's thoughts on the material.

Another
point we discussed, which may not be feasible due to the levels of bandwidth
and available material, was a portion of the program where students could design
their own campaign ads. Perhaps another way of approaching this would be for
students to enter the various demographics they want an ad to target. Then,
the program would be responsible for finding an ad that fit those criteria.

At this point, we feel that more discussion with both Professor West and
the target
audience would be helpful. We felt that discussing the different ideas we have
presented with political science concentrators would be a good idea. That way
we would have some idea as to how useful and educational our project as conceived
so far seems to them.

TECHNICAL
ISSUES/TOOLS: Since Professor West seemed most interested in having this program
be web based and attached to the website which he is already maintaining, our
deployment would have to be web based. In our discussion Director, Flash, and
standard methods of interactive websites (backend databases and scripting, etc.)
were all mentioned. Our final conclusion seems to be that the program may end
up being a combination of several of these.

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REVISED
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION:

2.17.00

TARGET
AUDIENCE: Brown Undergraduates in PS 111

SCHOOL
& TEACHER WE ARE WORKING WITH: Darrell West, Professor of Political
Science, Brown University

TARGET
COMPUTERS: PCs and Macs (Cluster machines) Netscape & IE 4+

DESCRIPTI$
At this time, Professor West is somewhat vague in his ideas for the project.
He is open to our suggestions, and seems to want us to come up with some of
the subject matter as well as implementation of the program. The guidelines
that he did give us were:

1. The project will be web based.
2. It will focus on the relationship of media and politics
3. A large part of the project will center around the deconstruction of a television
campaign ad.